On Your Mark...

Unfortunately many of our leaves have been blown away due to many windy and rainy days, but that didn't discourage them from trying.

Field Trip

Brett has all morning and most of the afternoon off on Tuesdays so he can go out and recruit. This works out great for our homeschooling family and shared love of being with "Daddy". On Tuesday (Emma was find, by the way) we did our schoolwork right away in the morning and headed out to Two Harbors, MN with Brett.

The kids and I dropped Brett off at the high school and went in search of something cool to do. We find an old train museum/depot with a locomotive displayed out in front. It was the train that they used to lay the rails that extend from Duluth on up the North Shore. Aidan was fascinated by it and loved looking at all the mechanism and trying to figure out what connected to what, and what made what move, etc. Fun stuff!

We had quite a bit of time left, but a front was coming in, we were right by the shore, and the wind was freezing cold so we drove up to the parking lot for the lighthouse, took this picture (see below), got back in the car and went to pick up Brett.

When we were getting into the car I noticed a sign indicating that touring the lighthouse was not going to break the bank so after we picked Brett up we headed back to the lighthouse and went on a self-guided tour.

Our first stop was the Pilot House from the ship the Frontenac. The ship was shipwrecked in 1979 due to snow and hazardous conditions. The kids had a great time taking turns being the "captain" (well, two liked taking turns...Miss Gigi mainly liked yelling at the other two for infringing upon her space) and checking out all the equipment they used for operating the ship.

This is Aidan pretending to be the captain as he's discovering the ship is about to hit the reef that ended her career.

"Full steam ahead me hearties!"

Exploring the kitchen in the "Assistant Keeper's House"

Trying to prove to Brett that although I don't have much to show for it I do know the general motion one needs to make in order to make a sewing machine work.

The Two Harbors Lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The first lighting was in 1892.

Are we doing a good job pretending we aren't freezing? Do you spy the ship coming in behind us (it actually didn't stop at Two Harbors, but continued on to Duluth and was leaving port this morning as we were crossing the bridge coming back from running errands...cool, huh?)

You be the Judge

Emma woke up this morning, sneezed, gagged, and threw up. Now, most kids who throw up are actually sick. Some of the times that is the case with Emma, but she has a gag reflex like none other and has in the past puked because she gagged.

We were supposed to go recruiting with Brett (well, we wouldn't actually go to the recruiting part), but now I'm not so sure. Is this a case of the stomach bug, or a case of a little girl who has been begging to watch a movie this week (we try to not do tv during the week, just the weekend) and knows that when one is sick in this household one gets to lay on the couch and watch pretty much however many movies one desires. Hmmmmm.....what to do, what to do.

Hiking again!

We took the kids out hiking again this past Saturday. We're trying to soak up all the heat and sunshine before winter gets here. I think this little guy was doing the same thing:

And because you know you all want to see more......

Who gave this one permission to grow up so fast?

Finally

The insurance adjuster finally came this afternoon. From the very beginning of this ordeal that's all we asked for. We were told to hire our own "professionals" to assess the damage, but when our professionals came back with big numbers the insurance company decided to send their own guy.
So, he came this afternoon, spent about 15-20 minutes and here's the deal:

-washer and dryer are being replaced
-freezer is being replaced
-water heater is being replaced
-tile floor and footings/trim is being replaced
-4' up of drywall is being replaced
-$ to pay people to move our stuff out of the way while floor/walls are being done

Whew! A blessing in disguise perhaps. We've had our washer and dryer for 7 years (which is ancient in this day and age where things are made to be broken and thrown away) and our water heater is 12 years old. I'm very excited to get to go appliance shopping, but it was SOOOOOOOOOO not worth it.

Now, onto taking steps to make sure that this doesn't happen again next spring.

"You Are Not in Charge"

Wow. I can't count the number of times I say that to Aidan in any given day. Being the oldest, being almost six, and being Aidan he tends to think that he's the boss and that we're all subject to his commands.
Imagine my shock and horror when I discovered, in light of recent events (oh yes, there's more...), that perhaps God is trying to tell me the same thing: YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE! I AM!
So, after several days of wallowing in my self-pity and trying to figure out "why?" I have resolved to letting go and letting HIM be in charge.

When it rains...

....it floods

....in our basement

....with sewage!

We knew that basement flooding can be a problem. We knew that it had been a problem in this house before we got here. We spent many hours and a lot of sweat "grading" the slope around our house so that this would be less of a problem. We have had some good rains since we've moved, and were feeling quite smug about the fact that our basement had yet to flood.

Let's go back to last Sunday night/early Monday morning. Brett had just gone to bed, I hadn't gone to bed much earlier when we were awoken by a huge "thud-thud-thud". We got out of bed, did the usual "bedroom scan" of the kids' rooms, were satisfied that it was a mystery sound that may never be found and went back to bed. Never mind the fact that it was thundering and lightening and pouring rain. "Thud-thud-thud" went the mystery noise again. Brett went for a solo exploration this time and somewhere in the back of his mind he was told "go check out the basement". He did, yelled for me, and this is what we saw:

That bathroom mat floated out of the toilet "stall".

Our whole basement was being flooded with city sewer water right before our eyes and there wasn't a thing we could do about it. Well, there was one thing we could do. I jumped from furniture to furniture trying to salvage anything I could. Brett took a tour of the basement with the aid of our computer chair and wheeled himself from room to room saving all that he could and taking pictures for documentation purposes.

We discovered that the mystery sound was the toilet lid going up and slamming shut while the "water" (I use that term lightly) gushed (as in geyser) out of it. Lovely!

The basement is technically "clean". We are in the midst of dealing with our insurance company ('nough said) and getting quotes from different "experts".